Vilém Kinský

Wilhelm Kinsky (Czech: Vilém Kinský z Vchynic; German: Wilhelm Graf Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau; 1574 – 25 February 1634) was a Czech Count and statesman. The Kinsky family were members of the Bohemian aristocracy.

Vilém Kinský.

Biography

Vilém Kinský married Alžběta Trčka z Lípy, whose brother Adam Erdmann Trčka was married with Maximiliane Harrach, a sister of Albrecht von Wallensteins wife. In 1628, Vilém Kinsky was elevated to the rank of count in the Bohemian nobility when Wallenstein was elevated to Duke of Frýdlant. As a rich landowner in Bohemia, Kinsky lived in exile at Dresden after the Battle of White Mountain, because he was a Protestant and, unlike the members of the Trčka family, had refused to convert to the Catholic faith but was allowed to regularly visit his Bohemian estates. Subsequently, together with his brother-in-law Adam Erdmann Trčka, he attempted to pull Wallenstein over to the Protestant and Swedish side.

Kinsky was assassinated during the Thirty Years' War, on 25 February 1634 at Cheb, together with Trčka and other officers loyal to the general and the Field Marshal himself, during the so-called Eger Bloodbath, a plot to purge the Imperial Army from Albrecht von Wallenstein's supporters. Kinsky's estates, among them Teplice, were confiscated by Emperor Ferdinand II.

One of his descendants, Oktavian Kinsky, founded the Kinsky-horse breeding stud in Bohemia, in the 1830s.

Bibliography

• Otto's encyclopedia at [1]
• Wilson, Peter (2011). The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy. London: Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06231-3.
• Official pages of the family Kinsky: Vilém Kinský a Albrecht Václav Eusebius z Valdštejna
• Joachim Whaley: Germany and the Holy Roman Empire:Volume I: Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1493-1648,Oxford University Press 2011
• Hamish M. Scott: The European nobilities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Volume 2, Longman, 1995